


law of averages

by KestralWatcher



Series: by any other name [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Crossover, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Sex, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Needs a Hug, Multi, Murder Husbands World Tour, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sort Of, because of the snap, the author might also need a hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26863708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestralWatcher/pseuds/KestralWatcher
Summary: When Thanos snapped his fingers, half of Earth’s population vanished. Fifty percent. Nearly 4 billion people.Per the law of averages, 50 percent of 7.5 billion can also mean 80 percent of a single family.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Clint Barton, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: by any other name [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927990
Comments: 83
Kudos: 279





	1. Year 1 (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been living rent-free in my brain, and if I have to suffer, I’m dragging the rest of you with me. If you have read “a hero by any other name,” you already know that this will ultimately have a happy ending. However, this will still get rather dark at points. Please heed the tags for relevant warnings.
> 
> Relative familiarity with the events of _Infinity War_ , _Avengers: Endgame_ , and _The Old Guard_ is helpful.
> 
> No beta, we die like immortals.

**Year 1**

For Joe, the Snap went something like this:

Back in the 90s (the 1990s, Nile), Joe and Nicky drove into Auckland from their cottage outside the city. When they reached the bistro with a lovely view of the harbor where they planned to have dinner, the hostess asked whether if they’d felt the earthquake that occurred about ten minutes ago.

It was a small earthquake, and neither man felt a thing on the highway. Some combination of the vehicle’s shocks and the speed at which they traveled.

To them, an invisible earthquake.

Except during the Snap, Joe is alone in the car.

* * *

_Day 1_

Because Joe was the one who finished the last of the coffee, he is the one who volunteers to take the quick drive into town to restock on it and other random essentials. As always, Nicky offers to accompany him, but Joe gestures him back to his book. He will return by the time Andy and Nile finish preparing snacks for their afternoon movie, the perfect activity for this dreary day.

He and Nicky do not exchange kisses or endearments before he leaves. Joe does not even say that he loves him. He walks out of the house with nothing more than a wave.

(It must happen in the short minutes between when he leaves the outskirts of town and arrives home. He does not see the immediate chaos and confusion. Later, he is not sure whether that makes it better or worse.)

The house is empty when Joe returns. Or at least, Nicky is no longer curled on the couch with his book, and Andy and Nile have vanished from the kitchen. No one answers his call. He does not find them in the dining room, in Andy’s first-floor suite, in the bedrooms upstairs, in the attic space still filled with books in French.

Joe does not find them on the back veranda, where it has started to drizzle. The moisture that coats his skin is easy to ignore in the face of his rising concern, in the memories that rise unbidden of the attack on the Charlie safe house, when Merrick’s force took them, took _Nicky_ —

He inhales. Holds it for four counts. Exhales. Holds it for four counts. Repeats. The same breathing exercise he taught Nile, to stem the rising panic after her dreams (nightmares) of Quynh.

The house shows no signs of combat. He has not been gone long enough for all traces of knockout gas to dissipate (though he does smell popcorn). No evidence exists to show they were taken by force.

Perhaps a walk up to the ridge? If Nicky needed some air after he finished his book, if Andy went a bit stir-crazy after being inside for three days of poor weather, if Nile followed them. He can take the car and rescue them from a damp walk home.

No note in the kitchen or front hall (he does remove a packet of popcorn from the microwave that Nile has burnt once again). But they have only a single vehicle, and Joe did not pass them on the way back from town. It is the only explanation. Joe hops back in the car and imagines how he will tease them for their poor impromptu planning.

He does not pass them on the road for the mile to the top of the ridge. He does not find them at the lookout point, where the Cambrian countryside spreads wide but wreathed in low, damp clouds.

He does, however, find the first signs of chaos.

From one edge of his view, smoke hovers above the nearby town—indications of a massive fire that did not exist when he left the grocery store. Farther to the left, a sight that tightens his chest even more, a passenger jet has slammed through the landscape. The debris stretches across vineyards and fields and forest.

Now, Joe pulls his phone from his pocket, cursing his initial instinct that he would always know where Nicky goes. That he prioritized the opportunity to gently mock his family after he rode to the rescue over finding out where they were as soon as possible.

No service.

He makes a three-point turn and drives back down the lane, past the house and back to town. A three-car collision blocks his way at the first intersection. When Joe exits the car, he notes the crying child in the backseat of one vehicle, then the absence of any drivers or other passengers.

Smoke pours from the engine of one car, mingling with the haze already draping over the town from the fire Joe spotted from the ridge. Adrenaline has now coursed through his body for long minutes, but he acts on instinct. He pulls the child from her booster seat and clutches her to his chest, murmuring comforting nonsense in absent Italian as he performs a cursory check of the other vehicles. Still no sign of any others, and the girl in his arms whispers, “Mama disappeared, Mama disappeared, Mama disappeared,” over and over again.

He hopes she doesn’t have a concussion, though he finds no immediate signs of injury on the toddler.

Leaving the accident, Joe carries the girl into a nearby shop—a dry cleaner owned by a married couple who have looked timeless and ancient every time Joe and Nicky stayed at the Cambria house for the past two decades. He could leave the girl and ask them to call emergency services while he investigates the rest of the wreck for possible injured.

The bright tones of the bells above the door contrast with Berto’s expression of stunned horror. “It is happening all over,” he says, gesturing to the television mounted in one corner of the shop.

Joe perches the girl on the edge of the counter and asks, “What is?”

“Ameli just…vanished,” Berto says. “Right in front of me. And then the cars outside crashed, and…” His voice breaks on a sob.

Joe rubs the girl’s back on autopilot and forces himself to focus on the anchor’s sober voice. “…Reports continue to pour in from all over the country and world of vanishing people, reported by friends and family to disappear in mid-air.” As she speaks, the newscaster’s eyes keep shifting to the side, as if seeking a fellow anchor who isn’t there anymore. The image switches to video taken mid-report, showing a politician in the middle of a press conference. With no warning, she and multiple people in the cluster behind her shimmer into a sort of dust and then drift away.

Berto hitches another sob at the sight, and Joe reaches up to switch off the television. “Berto, I need you to lock up the shop and come with me, all right?” Joe asks. He ditches his original plan to leave the child with the old man when it’s obvious that neither can take care of themselves at the moment. His heart hammers in his chest, and a voice in the back of his mind snarls before picking up a subtle chant that Joe can’t afford to listen to right now.

_Nicolò, Andromache, Nile. Nicolò, Andromache, Nile. Nicolò, Andromache, Nile._

Joe escorts Berto toward downtown, carrying the now-silent little girl on his hip. A few blocks away, they find an impromptu triage center outside a medical clinic, into whose care Joe entrusts the old man and little girl, then asks what he can do to help. For the next few hours, Joe joins a search party going home-to-home, seeking out those who need medical attention, looking for unsupervised young children, turning off unattended stoves and ovens.

The “No Service” alert continues to flash on his phone, but the gossip mill runs as efficiently as ever, even in times of unparalleled crisis. The vanished people are being linked to the alien space ships that appeared recently in New York City and Edinburgh. Word of an enormous battle in Wakanda has leaked to the outside world.

Cries of delight from reunited friends are overcome by the grief of those who realize their loved ones are among the missing. As darkness falls in the town and exhaustion plucks at Joe’s mind, he finally leaves one empty house and walks back to the car. It still sits abandoned at the side of the road.

The work no longer drowns out the chanting from his hindbrain as he drives, white-knuckled, back to the house.

_Nicky, Andy, Nile, Nicky, Andy, Nile. NickyAndyNileNickyAndyNileNickyNickyNickyNickyNicolòNicolòNICO._

The house remains silent when he steps through the front door. No footsteps rush to greet him, to ask where he’s been all day.

A light is on in the kitchen, and Joe tosses out a plate of half-chopped fruit. When he picks up the knife to wash it, he finds a faint red stain on the metal. He’s seen enough bloody blades in his life to know what it is, and for a moment, he allows his fear to guide his hand as he pitches the knife into the sink with a cry of mingled pain and rage. Metal rings against metal before the blade falls still, leaving Joe’s heaving breathing as the only sound.

_NickyNickyNickyNickyNicolòNicolòNicolò_ —

Joe switches out the light in the kitchen. Walks upstairs to their room. Neither of them had bothered to make the bed after a leisurely lie-in on an overcast day. Joe toes off his boots and crawls across the mattress. Curls up around Nicky’s pillow, burying his face into the fabric and inhaling the mingled scent of detergent and that which is purely his beloved.

The pillow is no replacement for Nicolo, but no matter—

_NicolòNicolòNicolòNicolòNICO_ —

Sleep is a long time coming.


	2. Year 1 (Part 2)

_Week 1_

Sensation rips through Joe’s limbs, and he groans as he stretches. He drifted for so long that the inevitable happened—death by thirst. Now, he tongues the roof of his mouth, but it all feels of sandpaper. As he squints into the bright sun that pours into the bedroom, he finds Nicky’s pillow shoved to the side. After a deep breath to steady the shivery return to consciousness that follows every death, he understands why.

The bed stinks. He stinks.

A glance at the bedside clock on Nicky’s side only tells him the time, a little after eleven in the morning. He gropes for his phone, plugged in on his own nightstand, with a trembling arm.

Four days. No wonder he needs a shower.

At some point during his mental and emotional (and physical) crash, local phone service has been restored, and emergency alerts crowd the lock screen. Notices to stay home. Then, notices to check on neighbors. Finally, notices where to report the missing (and the dead).

Joe knows of at least three, but where does one report that his sisters and husband are among the vanished when they don’t legally exist in the first place?

He lets the phone drop to his chest as he stares blankly at the bedroom ceiling. Death froze the locked-up feeling in his chest, the pressure of unspent fear, the burn of anger with no target. Life rereleases it, but this time the tears don’t come.

Because he’d been semi-functional while helping in town, but the moment he stopped, he literally grieved to death.

_Nicky strolls into the bedroom, carrying two cups of coffee. He places them on his nightstand and braces one knee on the bed, leaning over to press his lips to Joe’s. “Going to lay about all day,_ cuaro mio _?”_

Joe blinks, and the imagined specter vanishes as surely as the real Nicky. He hisses a curse that comes out more like a croak and draws his limbs in, curling to the side and burying his face in his arms since he can’t press his lips to the nape of Nicky’s neck, can’t kiss his husband, can’t touch his husband.

His stomach growls in protest.

“ _Get up,_ hayati.”

Joe lurches into a sitting position, always willing to heed his Nicolò when he gets _that_ tone in his voice. Black spots dance in his vision, and he huffs a dry laugh. He needs water, he needs to eat, he _definitely_ needs that shower, and it has never been in his nature to let the world pass by. And if his subconscious decides using Nicky will spur him into action, well—

It’s not as if, after almost nine hundred years, Joe will ever forget his beloved’s voice.

* * *

After a cup of water and a careful slice of not-quite-stale toast in the kitchen, after a shower and clean clothing, after stripping the bed, Joe finds himself on auto-pilot as he continues the motions to close up the house.

There had been no answer when he tried Copley, but based on what he hears on news radio as he removes perishables from the refrigerator, the odds of connection had been unlikely.

Counts are still tentative, but initial reports seem to indicate a loss of half the world’s population, with no rhyme or reason to who had vanished and who had been left behind.

Which means there’s still a chance.

He has no phone number for Booker, but the man is still Joe's brother despite the heartache of the past months. Is still his family. Anyway, he knows precisely where in Paris the asshole probably holed himself up after London, and it hasn’t been nearly long enough yet for the first wave of drinking to be over yet. He certainly doesn’t have the luck to get his wish for death this way, not via some magic and/or extraterrestrial (reports are still fuzzy) that would take Andy and Nile and _Nicky_ , too.

And he can think of significantly less dramatic reasons to call off an exile. For now, he satisfies himself with a simple plan: Find Booker. Figure out the best way to help. Because half of all medical personnel are gone, half of emergency services are gone, half of all militaries are gone, and sooner or later, someone will take advantage of that.

Joe straps his scimitar to his back. Stares at Nicky’s longsword for a long moment. Leaves it hanging next to the bed.

All flights in the EU are grounded because no one knows whether another wave of vanishings might occur at any moment. The trains are running, but Joe recoils from the idea of packing himself into a carriage filled with other shell-shocked survivors, everyone in mourning, and either running to or away from tragic circumstances.

Crashes litters the local area, and probably a lot farther, the logical outcome when a significant number of drivers disappear from their vehicles. Clean-up is expected to take months. There are ways around that, however. Joe secures an extra pack of supplies (food, water, ammo, and various identities and forms of currency) to the back of Andy’s motorcycle, settles his sword and backpack into position, and hits the road.

* * *

The drive itself would generally take twelve hours, nonstop.

Instead, it takes Joe closer to three days. Mile after mile, crash debris clogs the highways, so he resorts to back roads that take him through devastated towns.

There is an actual border crossing between Italy and France, as every nation is on heightened alert. Joe hands over his most recent French passport and offers the most straightforward plausible explanation—he’s been biking around Italy and now needs to go home to check on his family. He expects more pushback because traveling without Nicky or Andy or Booker (his very white family) since 2001 has been a bitch and a half. But the border agent waves him across before more than the scant outline of an alternative plan forms in the back of his mind.

Things are not much better in France, but it’s more of the same as in Italy rather than anything dramatically different. He is spending the night outside Lyon, watching the news in a crowded bar (the new national sport around the world, he’s sure), when Wakanda finally breaks its silence.

Excited murmuring erupts around the bar until frantic shushing quiets everyone down just as an elegant woman with a perfectly shaved head steps up to the podium. Like everyone else, her eyes carry the shadows of loss, but she holds herself with a military bearing as she reads a statement in accented English. Seconds later, a French translator overlays her words.

Formalities first: The woman, a general in the military, speaks on behalf of the Wakandan royal family. King T’Challa vanished with the others, but his sister and mother remain safe in the capital city. No threats to the line of succession are anticipated.

The bit that’s probably actually important, even if it’s not the reason anyone is watching: Wakanda will continue to assist across the continent where it can, including helping areas with significant infrastructure issues. Some disruption to established aid contracts is expected based on the reduction in workforce, but the government is already working on alternative options.

A bit of grumbling stirs in the room at that. Since the revelation of Wakanda’s actual capabilities a handful of years ago, the country has made no secret of its aid priorities. Significant portions of Europe don’t qualify. Joe ignores the handful of dirty glances shot his way. _I’m not from that part of Africa,_ blaireaux _._

And finally, the bit teased by the news anchors that everyone has waited for: Wakanda military forces assisted the Avengers in a battle against an army from outer space but were unable to keep the foreign leader from acquiring an artifact that allowed him to enact the mass disappearance event. The leader is no longer on Earth, and the speaker, Okoye, assures her worldwide audience that he and his army have left the planet and that the Avengers are currently tracking him.

She does not take questions. The broadcast returns to national anchors who immediately begin to dissect the general’s statement.

Joe pushes through the crowd and stumbles out of the bar. He retreats around a corner of the building and leans on the wall next to his bike. The humidity in the air does little to clear his head, but he presses the back of his skull against the cool brick.

_Fucking Avengers._

(Andy isn’t here to say it, so in her stead, Joe adds, _Fucking Iron Man_.)

He hasn’t been a fan of them since they first encountered Captain America in the Forties, and he’s especially never loved the chaos that seems to have followed that group since the Battle of New York in 2012. Sometimes he still feels like he hasn’t caught up on the two months of lost sleep the team spent pouring through the Hydra data that Black Widow released after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., half looking for targets to hit and half fearing that they would stumble across records of _themselves_.

(The closest they find is that some of Nicky’s more spectacular sniper shots are attributed to either a classified S.H.I.E.L.D. operative or a classified foreign agent. Nicky is content to have his work remain in the shadows. This does not stop Joe from being perturbed on is behalf, always proud of his husband’s incredible skill.)

But more importantly, Joe wonders at what the general had left unsaid. What will the Avengers do once they find this enemy? Despite their name, taking this military leader out would do nothing to give recompense to those who lost friends and family due to the battle in Wakanda.

Perhaps they seek a way to—

Joe twitched one hand slightly to the side, but he found no answering touch. No hand to grasp his in return, to bring it up to lips for a kiss.

Andy broke when they finally gave up searching for Quynh. Decades of hope dashed, crushed beneath the passage of time. How many nights had he and Nicolò spent holding their sister in their arms? How many days had they spent making sure she did not follow her love into the sea?

Joe cannot afford that hope, that speck of light in a vast sky of impossibility.

He can only focus on tomorrow.

* * *

The next day, Joe picks the lock to the front door of a shitty Paris apartment. The once-popular neighborhood declined in the latter decades of the twentieth century, and gentrification has not yet reached it in the twenty-first. For all Joe mocked Booker for keeping the place, he has to admit he appreciates not having to search the city for his brother. Every street has a vaguely post-apocalyptic feel as if the current generation does not yet realize that the City of Lights has survived possible destruction before and probably will again in the future.

Inside, Joe finds a dead smartphone next to a pistol on a stained kitchen table. No stench of rotten food, but knowing Booker, he kept nothing decent to eat here in the first place.

Further inside, a half-full tumbler of whiskey sits next to an empty armchair. It faces a television that is on, but muted.

Joe drops his pack to the floor, then bites his fist against a howl as he sinks to his knees beside it.


	3. Year 1 (Part 3)

_Month 1_

Darkness envelops the shitty Parisian apartment, and Joe’s ass fell numb hours ago on the stained linoleum floor, but he doesn’t move. If he stays right here, he can pretend that Booker ran out for an errand, leaving the television on and his unfinished drink behind. His younger brother will return any moment with takeout or a bag of more alcohol (the latter more likely than the former). He will be shocked to see Joe, Joe will explain the circumstances, they will cry together. But they will be together, two parts of a small family made even smaller, but not alone.

_We are not meant to be alone,_ tesoro.

Except Nicky is not here to voice the imagined thought out loud, just as Joe can no longer pretend that perhaps Booker’s errand has run long. He uses the side of the couch to haul himself to his feet, shaking the pins and needles from his legs and stretching his back.

Turning off the television and setting the used glass in the sink are rote actions. Joe spots an unmade bed through one of the two doorways off the front room of Booker’s small apartment. It won’t smell like Nicky, but it will beat attempting to find better lodgings at this time of day.

(The bed does not smell like Booker either, but Joe has no tears left to cry.)

* * *

Joe remains in Paris for another week, half to clear out any valuable (and/or incriminating) from Booker’s apartment and half to render what assistance he can to the lower-class neighborhood's remaining members, where formal aid always takes longer to reach. Eventually, however, he turns the motorbike north, though the only additions to his packs are the pistol Booker kept on his nightstand and a small box that Booker never knew Joe was aware of.

If all Joe has left of his family are a handful of trinkets Booker kept to remember his wife and sons by—well, it’s up to him to remember them now.

He crosses the Channel with the aid of a small fishing boat. The woman who transports him lost both her husband and grown son on the day of disappearances, and she waves off his efforts of payment when she realizes that Joe is equally alone. She accepts no more than what it would cost to replace the fuel used on the trip and wishes him well in finding his friend outside London.

“Friend” is an overstatement, but Joe does not know how to explain “mortal who stalked and tried to murder me, but then my boss threatened him into working for us because we exiled the former member of our team who specializes in faking documents.”

At least he doesn’t have to ride through London to reach Copley’s ritzy neighborhood in Surrey. Other than the front law being a bit overgrown, the modern house is the same as Joe remembers from the day they visited after leaving—

He presses his hand to the pack that holds Booker’s box, takes a deep breath, and jogs to the front door. Knocks.

Knocks again.

No answer.

Joe cups his hands around his eyes to peer through one of the windows that frame the front door. Inside is also as he remembers, tastefully decorated by an interior designer who incorporated the various antiques with sweeping lines and neutral colors. Nicky had loved the house, even if Joe had itched to throw paint at the walls.

“You lookin’ for James?”

He turns at the voice from the front path, where a teenager balances on a bicycle and one foot. Her eyes shine more with curiosity than suspicion, even under the familiar sadness that adorns everyone Joe has seen since back home in Italy.

“Yes,” Joe says, gesturing to the front door. “Is he—?” Words fail him, as they have so often recently. As if without Nicky at his side to catch the ones meant just for his beloved, his voice has lost any reason for being.

The girl sighs, a huff of air that is half sorrow and half annoyance.

“Oh,” Joe says.

“Nah, he didn’t vanish with the rest,” she says. “Mum had just seen him at the shops. They found his car crashed halfway here. Think he died when the other driver disappeared.” She tilts her head, studying Joe more intently, and a few of the hard edges in her voice soften. “Sorry. Friend of yours, I guess?”

“Something like that,” Joe says. “I appreciate you letting me know.”

“S’okay,” she says. Looks away with a shrug, mantle of hardened teenage indifference once again secure. The girl pedals off before Joe can say anything else.

Joe turns around again and stares up at the big house. Too big for a childless couple, much less one man who chose to bury his grief with the weight of sins. Perhaps the apartment in Paris had been more appropriate to its inhabitant, but Joe can’t stomach the idea of returning.

He considers the nearest safehouse, an hour or so drive north. Except Nile had been with them the last time, after the shit with Merrick. Another ghost to haunt what might otherwise be a home.

Joe hadn’t much liked Copley. Had barely known the man. But at least he wasn’t one of Joe’s ghosts, strung along the road behind him like beads from a shattered necklace.

He picks the lock on the front door and goes inside.

* * *

Months pass. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the world’s diminished population spreads into the empty spaces left behind. Joe is not the only new arrival to the neighborhood, but he is the quietest. Does his best to look after his new neighbors, whether it's pitching in to finish the clearing the local streets of empty vehicles, chasing off a truckful of armed thugs from the city armed with nothing but his shotgun and an expression even Joe fears to meet in the mirror, or ensuring that Sadie makes it home from school on the days her mother works late. (Sadie’s mother sends the teen over with some form of meal at least once a week, and if neither woman mentions the man they share space with in family photos, they also never ask after Joe’s own family.)

Joe finally moves from the guest room to the master suite. Donates Copley’s clothing to the grandfather of the family of former Syrian refugees who move in down the street. Paints the white walls. Arranges the spices in the kitchen the way Nicky prefers. When he realizes what he’s done, he rearranges the entire kitchen the way Nicky would choose in defiance of the small, unthinking action.

Human nature also abhors a power vacuum, and even though the world’s governments power through, there will always be those who see opportunity amongst the rubble of tragedy. Joe’s adopted town has no problem with him and the other families who have taken over vacant homes, those who do their best to help those around them as much as themselves. One weekend (before the armed thugs incident), he goes from fixing Sadie the gears on Sadie’s bicycle to chopping down a dead tree three doors down to patching a cracked window on the next street. Before he knows it, he’s the local fixer for problems big and small. Kids show up at Copley’s (his) door for a plaster if they skin their knees closer to his house than their own. When Mrs. Davies arrives at Copley’s (his) door sporting a burgeoning black eye, Joe installs her in the guest room before summarily evicting her husband with great prejudice.

(This, combined with the armed thug incident, is how Joe accidentally forms a sort of “neighborhood guard.” That night, a warm spot tugs at his chest despite the coolness of the pillow he wraps himself around to sleep. He knows it is nothing more than a psychosomatic response to a wish for Nicky’s approval at his actions, but he still sleeps better than he has in months.)

Gradually, a world that has been shaken to its very core beings to stabilize. Perhaps Joe might have accomplished more material good in a more impoverished nation, but he has been all over the world with Nicolò and the other members of his family. This neighborhood in Surrey cannot see the space next to him that will never be filled. They know only “Joe,” not “Joe and Nicky” or “Joseph and Nicholas” or “Josef and Nicolas” or “Yusuf and Nicolò.”

He finds the concept of “missions” redundant in the face of a global apocalypse, but that does not mean he does not do good where he can, beyond his tiny corner of Surrey. Some evenings, when the silence of a house that should be filled with Nicky humming while he cooks, with Andy’s quiet yet scathing commentary as she sharpens a weapon, with Nile’s infectious laughter (with Booker’s wry humor), Joe gears up and rides into the city. Not every neighborhood has come together the way his has, and he expends plenty of grief-filled rage by breaking up drug rings, or removing the heads (and occasionally other body parts) of forced prostitution operations, or sometimes merely stopping a mugging.

There is no comm in his ear because he is no longer a member of a team. This means his own senses and abilities limit him as he crosses the expanse of an empty warehouse floor, nearing a back office that might contain a hard drive he can turn over to local authorities with information about a rumored human trafficking circle. His surveillance of the warehouse indicates the office is empty, but Joe freezes with his hand inches from the doorknob when an arrow thuds into the wood next to his head.

He whirls around and raises his weapon. A figure drops from a second-story catwalk and strolls in his direction, bow clutched in one hand. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man says in a generic American accent. “The whole place is rigged to blow.”

Joe takes in the man’s archaic weapon. His unbranded leather gear, so different from Joe’s own dark jeans and hoodie.

He no longer has Nicky’s voice in his ear, broadcast from where he might be perched to oversee the potential field of battle through his sniper scope. And yet he has no trouble imagining his husband’s reaction to Joe’s unexpected company:

_Fucking Avengers._


	4. Year 2 (Part 1)

**Year 2**

Joe resettles his grip on the shotgun and risks a glance behind him. Damn it. The so-called superhero is right, and Joe hadn’t noticed the line of wire. He ignores the imagined French-tinged grunt of disapproval that reverberates in the back of his mind as he turns to the other man and says, “Then you’d be better off outside the warehouse while I disarm it.” Because the last thing Joe needs is a fucking Avenger seeing him return to life if he fucks up and sets it off.

“So you can take off with the hard drive on your own? Hardly.”

“And you need a list of trafficking victims for…?” Joe spins his free finger.

Now, the man narrows his eyes. They almost glint in the moonlight that trickles through the building’s high windows. “I need the financial information to cut off the ring at the source.”

This time, Joe curses himself rather than the man across from him. He’s been in the business long enough to know what the man implies. “London isn’t the only city where they’ve set up shop, then?”

“On my way to Barcelona right after this. We gonna stand around, or burn this place to the ground?”

This was Andy’s job. She designs the plays, Joe and Nicky just back her up. He bares his teeth, knowing the expression resembles a grimace more than a smile. “The second option has merit.” Joe finally lowers his shotgun all the way, though he doesn’t extend his hand or make any other civilized gesture of greeting. “I’m Joe,” he says. “And don’t you dare say Hawkeye.”

The archer smirks. “Nice to meet you, Joe. I’m Clint.”

* * *

The explosives are child’s play to disarm. Clint agrees to follow Joe back to the house so Joe can copy the hard drive and send the victim information to the local authorities, who can then contact the families who have no idea where their loved ones have vanished. It’s the first time he’s used Copley’s extensive rig for more than surfing the internet, and he’s proud enough of how he manages the task without stumbling under Clint’s steely-eyed gaze.

At the same time, working under the sniper’s attention, both here and back at the warehouse, settles something he hadn’t realized he missed in his everyday life. And at that revelation, as he hands over the compact solid-state drive they’d liberated from the office safe, Joe knows he’s in for another week’s worth of insomnia, haunting this house of a ghost while he mourns his own.

Clint nods in thanks as he slides the drive into a pocket of the pack he’d retrieved from the warehouse roof. Under the study's lamplight, it’s easier for Joe to pick up the stress that lines the man’s face.

Since the alternative is hours of pacing the neighborhood perimeter, Joe says, “It’s pretty late. Want a coffee before you hit the road?”

The other man tilts his head as if also used to input from an invisible voice in his ear. His shoulders slump. “Yeah, why not.”

He trails after Joe into the sleek kitchen, where Joe fiddles with the fancy machine under Clint’s not-uncomfortable gaze. He dumps three spoons of sugar into the first cup out of habit before cursing under his breath and shoving the drink away on the counter. He hands the next filled cup to Clint, who’d requested black. Joe drinks his the same way, unable to bear not hearing the tendril of gentle teasing that should flow through the kitchen if he’d doctored his cup with his usual milk so late at night.

They drink in silence for a handful of minutes, leaning on opposite counters. Then, Clint nods in the direction of the abandoned cup. “I keep doing the same damned thing. Ruining my first cup with that awful fake sweetener because—” His words cut off, and a muscle jumps at his temple.

And Joe doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t have the sympathy to spare for this man who played a role in why all this tragedy has occurred—at least as far as the gossip claims. Except Nicky no longer exists in this world, and if nothing else, Joe knows he would show this man kindness, and so Joe forces himself to do the same. “What’s their name?”

Clint’s knuckles are white where one hand grips the edge of the counter. “Laura. Her name is Laura.” He toasts his coffee toward the abandoned mug. “Who’s the sweet tooth?”

Joe says the name out loud for the first time in months. “Nicky.” Except that doesn’t feel right on his tongue, a harsh cut-off ending to a name that should be musical and dripping with passion. “Nicolò.” Clint probably assumes Joe is asserting the maleness of his missing partner after sharing the first gender-neutral name. Joe doesn’t particularly give a fuck what Clint assumes at the moment.

It’s like walls slam down between them after the moment of shared vulnerability. Clint sets his half-finished mug on the counter and mutters a quiet thanks before he exits the kitchen.

Joe doesn’t bother to follow as he tracks Clint’s progress retrieving his bag from the upstairs study, then as the other man leaves the house. The place feels as empty as it had before as if Clint’s own drawn presence barely made an impact on the atmosphere.

He dumps the rest of his coffee in the sink, then Clint’s. Stares at the third mug for a beat before doing the same. The phone in his back pocket vibrates with an incoming call. When he digs it out and checks the screen, it displays an American area code. He cancels the call without answering.

* * *

Over the next few months, Clint wanders in and out of Joe’s life like a feral cat. He never protests because it reminds him strongly of how Booker would appear and vanish from wherever Joe and Nicky decided to spend their time off between fighting alongside Andy.

Clint doesn’t drink the way Booker does, but the growing darkness in his eyes is hauntingly familiar.

Joe wonders whether the same darkness grows in his eyes, without Nicky’s to stare into.

They stamp out the remnants of the trafficking ring based in London. Joe follows Clint through Plymouth, Cardiff, and Aberdeen's ports, where they rescue victims, dispatch traffickers without prejudice, and collect information that Clint sends to his contact. Clint assists Joe on a few jobs of his own, providing cover as Joe convinces a handful of local organizations that attempting to set up “protection” rackets anywhere within Joe’s reach is a terrible idea.

Clint never questions Joe’s abilities. The superhero probably assumes Joe is a typical mercenary, former military spec-ops. And Joe never shares any variation of a last name, either Jones or al-Kaysani. He knows his English accent is nonspecific enough that, these days, he could hail from an immigrant family in any number of European countries.

Joe only calls Clint by “Hawkeye” one time. Clint’s lips tighten in the low light that reaches where they crouch between two shipping containers. He shakes his head once and says, “That name belonged to a team. Don’t bother.”

“You’re still sending info and taking direction from somewhere,” Joe whispers back. “Isn’t that your team?” For his part, he mostly avoids thinking that he might be working with whatever form the fucking Avengers have taken in this new world.

“Doesn’t much resemble the team it used to.”

Before Joe can respond, Clint dives out from cover and tackles the perimeter security that wanders too close to their hideout. Then, they’re embroiled in the usual fray of chaotic punches and gunfire that make up their typical joint operations, and Joe never brings it up again.


	5. Year 2 (Part 2)

A long-term mission that had seen Clint dropping in and out of Joe’s life more often than usual came to a head in the kitchen of an upscale restaurant. Clint wanted to stomp out the remains of a multi-continent operation headed by a Russian oligarch and finally tracked him down to London. Joe went along just to get out of the house.

It was relatively simple, as jobs went. The sort of projects he and Nicky often tackled as a pair during the periods they traveled apart from the rest of the team. Get in. Dispatch some muscle-bound enforcers. Listen to the oligarch beg for his life. Cut him off mid-sentence with a sword to the throat. (This time, an arrow rather than a sword.)

After his shower, Joe wanders into the sitting room to find Clint rolling a bottle of high-end vodka between his palms. “Need a glass?” he asks.

The other man’s shoulders jerk, as if he isn’t entirely aware of every move Joe makes, but then he sets the bottle on the low table between the two couches. “I snagged it out of habit.”

A laugh forces its way from Joe’s chest, and he digs through his own pack, discarded at the bottom of the stairs. The bottle he’d snatched from the kitchen remains untouched. He places it next to its twin and matches Clint’s raised eyebrow with a smirk. “Same here.” Joe fetches two glasses from the sidebar and settles onto the couch opposite Clint.

His companion does the honors, and they toast in silence before knocking back the drinks. The smooth liquor burns down Joe’s throat with the ease of truly expensive alcohol and settles warm in his stomach.

“Funny thing is,” Clint says, “I don’t even _like_ vodka all that much. Guess I just spent too much time around Nat over the years, and old habits are hard to break.”

It’s the first time Clint has name-dropped another Avenger around Joe. Nat is an incongruous nickname for Natasha Romanova, the infamous Black Widow, but then again, Joe thinks of the oldest woman in the world as “Andy.” He pours new drinks, and this time they sip in companionable silence. “I don’t mind vodka,” Joe finally says. “But I did the same as you. Saw the crate, figured Andy and Booker would like it—” He cuts off his train of thought with a sip of the liquor in question. Joe is well aware that this is the first time he’s mentioned other names around Clint.

They lock eyes for the barest moment. Weariness draws on Clint’s features, and he sits hunched over his knees, whereas Joe has forced his own pose of sprawled relaxation. The archer rolls his shoulders once and laughs under his breath. “If we’re doing this, I’m going to need a lot more of the vodka.”

“You and me both,” Joe says. They’ve been working together for over six months at this point. A mere trickle in the hourglass of Joe’s life, but the future is a vast creature of darkness without Nicky’s guiding light. The last time he cried was about three weeks ago when he equaled and then passed the most prolonged period he’d ever been apart from his beloved. He’s not sure he has any tears left to shed, so the vodka might as well act as a liquid stand-in.

They each drain another two glasses before Clint speaks again. “I was supposed to kill Nat the first time I ever saw her in person. Had her in my sights. Just had to take the shot. Except I decided to wait until after she killed the asshole she’d been sent after, and I saw her face. She wasn’t blank. She didn’t take pleasure in the action. She was so damned sad, and I almost threw away my career to get her away from the Red Room.”

Joe twitches at the mention of the Red Room. For a brief second, he wants to demand more information from Clint since he had just confirmed the whispered rumors of the shadowy organization. Andy never felt the intel was good enough to pursue, even when the killings attributed to the Red Room’s operatives continued. Instead, he squints through the gentle haze the vodka has shrouded his brain with and says, “Worked out in the end, though. You got to be Avengers.”

Clint shakes his head. “I haven’t been an Avenger since they put the tracking band around my ankle when I refused to sign the Accords. At least I got to spend time at home with the kids before—” He makes the handwave that has become part of every language since half the population vanished.

Except…Joe tries to make some form of logic work, gives it up as a lost cause, and figures he might as well ask instead. “Why all the missions then? S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone even before, so I assumed you were reporting back to your team.” He knows for a fact that Iron Man and the patriotic asshole are still around, even if he hasn’t exactly made a point to dig for more information about the current state of the world’s leading group of superheroes.

“Couldn’t stay on the farm,” Clint says. “Couldn’t stay at the compound. Figured I could do some good.”

The words slice through Joe’s core like lightning, and his hand spasms on his glass.

The sniper across from Joe doesn’t miss the reaction. “Yeah, figured that would strike a chord. What I don’t get,” Clint says, “is why a guy with such obvious skills seems content to do the same thing.”

“Usually, people just ask about the sword.”

“Joe, I use a bow. I used to work with a guy who used a fucking shield as a melee weapon. I was hardly going to ask about the sword.”

Joe pauses before answering further. Rolls tentative answers around in his head. Even this much decent vodka can’t compete with hundreds of years of conditioning. Finally, he says, “I was supposed to kill Nicky the first time we met, too.” Doesn’t add that he did, in fact, kill the invader. Repeatedly. It just didn’t stick.

Clint does him the honor of not pressing. “Nice to know we have something in common besides archaic weaponry.”

They share a laugh at that, though they express more as giggles thanks to the alcohol’s assistance. “But things changed,” Joe says. “At first, we ended up together through circumstance. Time passed. We grew closer. Then we met Andy and Quynh, and everything changed. I thought I’d never have a family again, but then I had two sisters along with the love of my life. And I thought I’d have them forever.” He heaves a shuddering breath and forces himself to summon their faces in his mind’s eye.

Though he doesn’t smile, compassion shines in Clint’s eyes, even in the room’s low light. “It’s better when it’s the family you choose, isn’t it.” He doesn’t make it a question. He knows.

Joe nods. “And then we found Booker.” He pours a fresh drink since his brother is not there to do it for him. “And later, Nile.” Finally, the knot in his chest expands to his throat, cutting off the words. Nearly a thousand years with Nicky. Little more than a year with Nile. Neither were enough.

“I thought I was lucky,” Clint says. He stares though the clear drink in his hand. “I had Laura and the kids. I had Nat and Phil and Nick. And now, all I have is the job.”

Joe also pours Clint another drink, then raises his own. “To the job.”

“To the job.”

* * *

They don’t get hangovers, per se, but dehydration can still cause a hell of a headache. Joe blames the pain pinching his brain above his eyes for why, for the first time, he answers the call from the American number. It’s been calling on a semi-regular basis for months, and a Joe in pain who didn’t have a Nicky ready with water and breakfast no longer has the patience for it. “ _Cosa vuoi_ ,” he snaps, defaulting to Italian in his current state.

Whoever is on the other end of the line pauses for a moment before asking, “ _Signor_ Yusuf al-Kaysani?” A feminine Irish lilt speaks his name, the one he knows he hasn’t used as a proper alias for over two decades.

Joe shoots up in bed. “Who the hell is this? Why do you keep calling me?”

“Thank you for finally answering my call,” the unknown speaker says, with only a touch of hesitancy. “I understand that you have been assisting Agent Clint Barton with local operations, and wanted to both extend my gratitude and offer any assistance you might need now or in the future.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and squints through the light that pours into the room, wishing he’d had the presence of mind to close the damned drapes before drunkenly falling into bed the night before. Last night’s conversation with Clint streams through his mind in a blur, his memory winning versus the vodka. “Not sure Clint accepts that title anymore.”

A short huff of laughter. “You’re probably right, Mr. al-Kaysani. May I call you Joe?”

“Maybe when you share your name. And why you’re calling.”

“I go by Friday. Clint Barton has done his best to drop off the radar, but his activities don’t exactly help him keep a low-profile. His former associates continue to value his life and good health, and politely ask that you continue your efforts to work alongside him when requested.”

His former associates. The fucking Avengers. “I’m not spying on him for you,” Joe says.

“Of course not,” Friday says, the scandal evident in her voice. “It just helps to know he has someone on his side, even now.”

Joe’s hand drifts to the side of the bed, where it meets a cool pillow rather than Nicky’s sleep-rumpled hair. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess it does.”

* * *

He stumbles out of his room an hour later, summoned by the scent of coffee. He accepts a mug from Clint with a grunt of thanks. The other man doesn’t look much better than Joe feels as he squints at a smartphone screen.

“Last night was the last thing I had lined up in Europe,” Clint says. “Thanks for the help.”

Joe pokes his head in the fridge and wonders whether he has enough eggs for shakshuka. “Any idea where you’re heading next?”

“Russia. To tie things up with Vlasi’s company on that end.”

After he places the egg carton and bag of tomatoes on the counter, Joe turns to Clint. “When do we leave?”


End file.
